The present invention relates to interactive visual lessons. More particularly, the present invention relates to a presentation authoring tool and interface used to create richly interactive visual lessons including, for example, telepresence experiences of remote locations and objects.
Conventional products provide various presentation authoring capabilities. For instance, Microsoft PowerPoint is a tool used to create presentations based on a sequence of slides. Two-dimensional text and drawings can be edited on each slide. It is possible to add hyperlinks to slides so that the user can navigate the presentation in a nonlinear order. However, Microsoft PowerPoint does not provide any capabilities for visualizing or annotating three-dimensional models.
The World Wide Web standards, including the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), specify an architecture that allows web pages made up of two-dimensional text and drawings to be navigated through hyperlinks. Some web browser plug-ins allow interactive three-dimensional models to be embedded in web pages. Some web based three-dimensional plug-ins and authoring systems include the Cortona Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) client from ParallelGraphics, 3D Anywhere from 3Di Ltd., b3d from Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc., and Shockwave 3D from Macromedia, Inc.
However, the World Wide Web architecture does not provide any capabilities for visualizing or annotating three-dimensional models. In addition, while web browser plug-in products allow three-dimensional models to be incorporated in web-pages, these three-dimensional models exist in isolation. Interactive hotspot links to other web pages cannot be authored within these three-dimensional models. Some web authoring systems also require software programming skills to implement some interactivity.
QuadriSpace Presenter from QuadriSpace allows presentations to be created that incorporate interactive three-dimensional models. Presentations are organized as a sequence of slides. However, QuadriSpace Presenter does not allow annotations or hotspot links to be added to three-dimensional models.
SketchUp from @Last Software Inc. allows three-dimensional models to be imported and annotated with a variety of drawing tools. Annotations are drawn directly on the model and exist in the three-dimensional space of the model. SketchUp provides rich annotation capabilities for three-dimensional models, but it operates on only a single model at a time. It has no notion of a presentation made up of multiple model views. It has no notion of hyperlinking.
Adobe Atmosphere from Adobe Systems Inc. allows three-dimensional virtual worlds to be created and edited. Elements of a virtual world can be made interactive by writing programming scripts. However, Atmosphere has no notion of a presentation made up of separate pages or slides because information is organized as a combination of many three-dimensional models to make a continuous virtual world. Atmosphere also requires software programming skills to implement some interactivity.
Conventional presentation authoring tools, such as those described above, create presentations that are limited in various interactivity or visualization capabilities. In addition, it is sometimes more difficult to author presentations with the conventional products because some conventional products require software programming skills to implement some aspects of presentations.